Julien looked across at the opposite table. The girl, as he had noticed before, was stealing frequent glances at him. For some reason or other, she seemed anxious to attract his attention.
"Quite a conquest!" Kendricks murmured. "Drink some more of that chianti, man, and bring some color to your cheeks. There's a charming little manicurist wants to flirt with you. What teeth and what a smile!"
"Considering that she has been listening to my history for the last quarter of an hour, I imagine that her interest is of a less sentimental nature," Julien said. "I have probably been pointed out to her as the biggest fool in Christendom."
"Not you," Kendricks declared. "I assure you that I am a critic in such matters. She looks when the young man who is with her is engaged upon his dinner, or speaking to the waiter. I am not positive, even, that she wants to flirt, Julien. I think she wants to say something to you."
Julien laughed.
"What shall I do? Present myself? Bah!" he added, almost fiercely. "I wish the girl would keep her black eyes to herself. I want to tell you this, Kendricks. You've talked some splendid common sense to me without going out of your way to do it. I am not going to whine, now or at any other time, but as long as I live I never want anything more to do with a woman. That sounds about the most futile and empty-headed thing a man can say—I know that. But there it is. I tell you the very thought of them makes me shudder. They're like pampered, highly-groomed animals, with their mouths open for the tit-bits of life. They have to be fed with whatever food it may be they crave for, and that's the end of it."
Kendricks motioned with his head across the room to where the little woman with the blackened eyebrows was eating her dinner.
"What about that?" he asked.
"I don't know anything about that sort," Julien admitted. "What you told me sounded like one of the things you read of in newspapers and never believe. I don't believe it. Mind you, I don't say it's false, but I don't believe it because I have never spoken to the woman whom I could imagine capable of such unselfishness. If I patch up the pieces again, Kendricks," he added, and his face was suddenly very dark and very set—the face of an older man, "whatever cement I use, it won't be the cement of love or any sentiment whatsoever connected with women."
Kendricks nodded.